Dred Scott Case

Justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts issued dissenting opinions. Curtis attacked Taney’s historical arguments, showing that blacks had voted in five states at the founding of the United States. Thus, they were citizens of the nation from the beginning and could not now be denied citizenship.

Republicans also opposed the Court’s decision. In speeches and throughout his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln alleged a conspiracy to nationalize slavery that had been hatched by Taney, Douglas, former U.S. president Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, then the president of the United States (see Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln-Douglas Debates).

On May 26, 1857, shortly after Taney’s decision, Scott gained his freedom when the sons of his first owner, Peter Blow, purchased and freed Scott and his family. Scott remained a free man until his death a few months later, on February 17, 1858.

His case, however, remained a key issue in American politics and law until the outbreak of the Civil War. Taney’s controversial decision in the case widened the breach between the North and South and further aggravated debates over slavery. It also played a decisive role in the emergence of Lincoln as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1860 and his election later that year. Despite the decision in the case, Scott v. Sandford and the Civil War ultimately helped to usher in the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom” for African Americans. In 1865 the nation adopted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which ended slavery. In 1868 it adopted the 14th Amendment, which declared that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the nation and of the state in which they live. These two amendments effectively reversed Taney’s assertions that the U.S. Constitution protected slavery and that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States.